International Social Justice: Philosophical and Political-Economic Considerations

Robert McNamara , quoted by Peter Singer in Practical Ethics (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1979 ), p. 159. The second quotation is from the World Development Report, 1978, p. iii.

Ibid., p. 159.

World Health Organisation , Global Strategy for Health for All by the Year 2000 (Geneva, 1981 ), p. 19.

Ibid. p. 19.

Ibid.. pp. 19-20. (These statistics are for the year 1980).

Peter Singer , op. cit, p. 161.

World Health Organisation , op. cit, p. 24.

It is assumed in this essay that aid can play a constructive role in promoting economic development and in relieving absolute poverty. For varying perspectives on the aid question, see P.T. Bauer and Basil Yamey , 'Why we should close our purse to the Third World', The Times, 1 1 April 1983, p. 10. And for the response see Tom Clausen. 'Third World aid must not be cut', The Times. 22 April 1983, p. 12, and the 11 letters that appeared in the correspondence columns the remaining weeks of the month. The aid debate can also be found in the pages of Millennium: Journal of International Studies : P.T. Bauer . 'The Case Against Aid' (Vol. 2, No. 2, 1973), pp. 5-18. James Mayall. 'Some Reflections on Professor Bauer's Case Against Aid' (Vol. 2, No. 2, 1973), pp. 56-63, and G.F. Salkeld. 'Professor Bauer's Case Against Aid Unproven' (Vol. 3. No. I. 1974). pp. 71-75. For a devastating critique of Professor Bauer's 'moral argument' against aid. see Amartya Sen. 'Just Deserts ', The New York Review of Books. Vol. 24, No. 3(March 4, 1982). pp. 3-6. And finally, for a more general and historical view of the aid debate. see the highly incisive discussion in Chapter 1 of John White. The Politics of Foreign Aid ( London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1974 ), pp. 11-33.

Compare Peter Singer , op. cit. Chapter 8 or 'Reconsidering the Famine Relief Argument' in Peter G. Brown and Henry Shue (eds.). Food Policy: The Responsibility of the United States in the Life and Death Choices (New York: The Free Press . 1977); Charles Beitz , Political Theory and International Relations. Part 3 ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); and Thomas Nagel , 'Poverty and Food: Why charity is not enough , pp. 54-62; This article is also in the Brown and Shue volume.

See Henry Shue , Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence and US Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980) and Alan Gewirth , 'Starvation and Human Rights' in K.E. Goodpaster and H.M. Sayre (eds.). Ethics and Problems of the 21st Century (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 1979). pp. 139-159.

Henry Shue. op. cit. p. 19.

Ibid., p. 23.

Ibid., pp. 24-25.

Ibid.. pp. 26-27.

Ibid., p. 13.

Alan Gewirth , op. cit. p. 140.

Alan Gewirth , quoted by William A. Galston , in Justice and the Human Good (Chicago: The University ofChicago Press. 1980). pp. 49-50.

Alan Gewirth , op. cit. pp. 142-143.

These are respectively Article 23(1). Article 26(1), and Article 27(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

For a clear step-by-step exposition of Gewirth's derivation, see his article, 'The Is-Ought Problem Resolved', Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. 47, 1974, especially pp. 46-61. Several other interesting discussions of the justification of human rights can be found in Joel Feinberg , Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.. 1973), pp. 88-94, and Richard Wasserstrom , 'Rights. Human Rights, and Racial Discrimination' in David Lyons (ed.). Rights (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth PublishingCo., Inc., 1979). pp. 46-57.

For a more detailed analysis along these lines, see Joel Feinberg. op. cit,. Chapter 4. or David Miller , Social Justice (Oxford : University Press, 1976). Chapter 2.

It is important to understand here the general context in which this argument is being made. Shue is responding to those people who claim that because 'positive rights' require actions as opposed to omissions they are less deserving of serious consideration. For a discussion of this and the distinction between 'positive' and 'negative' rights, see Shue. Chapter 2, especially pp. 35-5 1.

Henry Shue , op. cit, p. 52.

Ibid., p. 53.

Ibid.. p. 63.

James Fishkin , 'The Boundaries of Justice'. Journal of Conflict Resolution (Vol. 27, No. 2, June 1983), pp. 356-358.

Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. translated by David Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 112-114.

It is important to be clear here that there is a difference between the scope of a principle ofjustice and its magnitude. The scope of a principle of justice refers simply to the domain of one's obligations: the magnitude is concerned with how much these obligations demand of us. For more on this distinction see 'The Burdens of Justice', The Journal of Philosophy (Vol. 80, No. 10, October 1983), pp. 602-603.

James Fishkin , op. cit, p. 360.

Henry Shue , Basic Rights, op. cit, pp. 131-132.

Ibid. p. 139.

Ibid., p. 136.

Stanley Hoffmann , quoted by James Fishkin , op. cit. p. 360. See also S. Hoffmann , Duties Beyond Borders: On the Limits and Possibilities of Ethical International Politics (Syracuse : Syracuse University Press. 1981 ), pp. 150-165.

Michael Walzer , 'The Distribution of Membership' in Peter G. Brown and Henry Shue (eds.). Boundaries: National Autonomy and Its Limits (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981), pp. 11-12.

These criticisms of Hoffmann and Walzer come from James Fishkin, op. cit.

Henry Shue , Basic Rights, op. cit, p. 139.

This paragraph is a summary of Shue's discussion ibid., pp. 146-149.

Henry Shuc , Basic Rights, op. cit. p. 147.

Charles Beitz , op. cit. p. 151.

Ibid., p. 154.

See Judith Lichtenberg . National Boundaries and Moral Boundaries: A Cosmopolitan View' in Peter G. Brown and Henry Shuc (eds.), Boundaries: National Autonomy and Its Limits, op. cit, pp. 79-100.

Ibid., p. 96.

Charles Beitz , op. cit, p. 141. In a later article, Beitz explains why global obligations do not presuppose cooperative relations. He writes: 'If the original position is to represent individuals as equal moral persons for the purpose of choosing principles of institutional or background justice, then the criterion of membership is possession of the two essential powers of moral personality - a capacity for an effective sense of justice, and a capacity to form, revise, and pursue a conception of the good. Since human beings possess these essential powers regardless of whether, at present, they belong to a common cooperative scheme, the argument for construing the original position globally need not depend on any claim about the existence of intensity of international social cooperation'. See his 'Cosmopolitan Ideals and National Sentiment '. The Journal of Philosophy (Vol. 80. No. 10, October 1983), p, 595.

I owe this observation to Philip Windsor.

See the two Brandt Commission reports: North South. A Programme for Survival (London: Pan Books Ltd., 1980). and Common Crisis North South: Cooperation for World Recovery (London: Pan Books Ltd.. 1983).

See the review article by Andre Gunder Frank in Friedrich Ebert Foundation (eds.). Towards One World International Response to The Brandt Report ( London: Temple Smith Ltd., 1981).

For an analysis of this sort, see Francis Stewart , 'Brandt II - the morage of collective action in a self-serving world', Third World Quarterly (Vol. 5, No. 3, July 1983), pp. 640-649.

This term comes from Stanley Hoffmann. As Hoffmann writes: ' Moral politics is an art of execution: principles unaccompanied by practical means or by an awareness of possible trade-offs remind one of Pcguy's famous comment about Kant - his hands were pure, but he had no hands'. See S. Hoffmann , op. cit, pp. 143-144 and also pp. 27-43.